4 ms·

Safari only shows HDR in videos, not photos. It's possible to just show a single-frame video though.

lxgr 1y ago
And I could see Safari changing its behavior to only allow HDR for actually playing videos (or even playing videos with actually varying content, if websites start playing clever games with one second loops of still images), or maybe only after confirming an "I am wearing sunglasses right now" prompt.
- jchw 1y ago
  It looks like the current Safari developer preview supports it for images, according to the Mozilla bug.
- zamadatix 1y ago
  If it were to become a real problem I'd sooner see Apple, of all vendors, leave it as one of the many settings flags in Safari than intentionally avoid or remove support for wide range media in their app. Related: there is also a CSS property coming which allows sites to control which page content should be clamped to standard range or not. Worst case you can just add an * !important override in your Safari->Preferences->Advanced->Style Sheet if nobody else considers it problematic but you still wanted to clamp things (in Safari, otherwise you can just disable HDR).
  - tshaddox 1y ago
    Why would we expect this to become more of a problem than, say, websites playing audio quietly to encourage you to turn your volume up, than playing extremely loud audio?
    - zamadatix 1y ago
      Websites can't autoplay audio anymore (which is actually really annoying in a few use cases) precisely because of abuse. I don't think it'll be problematic though because a site can already choose to show you images a lot more bothersome than a bright light (I say this as I type on a 1600 nit HDR monitor) already and that's not a particularly common problem to worry about either. Same for videos, which already HDR support in browsers.
      - tshaddox 1y ago
        > Websites can't autoplay audio anymore (which is actually really annoying in a few use cases) precisely because of abuse. But this is hardly true. There are some complicated heuristics (like Chrome's "Media Engagement Index") but many websites can and do autoplay video and audio. And browser policies are even more relaxed for playing audio on user events (like clicking).
        zamadatix 1y ago
        MEI (and the like) is what I'm referring to, though perhaps we look at this from different angles. Sites can still mark audio should autoplay but it's now up to the browser to decide if it actually does it (because shitty sites would abuse that).
  - lxgr 1y ago
    Apple is definitely not afraid to block otherwise widely available features behind flags or extra clicks. For example, Web Push is available on iOS only for "installed PWAs".
    - zamadatix 1y ago
      Specifically media support though, for which Apple has built their entire OS (both macOS and iOS) and app experience around having the best out of the box color experience for designers/aesthetics (e.g. bit depth, wide gamut, true tone type adjustments, hdr all widely adopted early for this reason). This is in contrast to your example of Web Push, which is the antithesis of their goals on how the OS should be used and what for. The only reason Safari lacks HDR image support on macOS right now is it's their lowest priority platform for the feature. It's coming, it's supported on their other platforms, and it wasn't an unreviewed accident they've been working on it.
      - LoganDark 1y ago
        > they've been working on it. Could you provide a link to any recent communication from them about this, or are you just speculating based on that other platforms support it?
        zamadatix 1y ago
        I don't know about a communication... but I can do one better! You can download the latest Safari Technology Preview on macOS, toggle the "Support HDR Display" feature flag, and see it working (for certain image formats and HDR encodings - it's a flag in preview for a reason). E.g. the images at https://ccameron-chromium.github.io/hdr-jpeg/index.html https://ccameron-chromium.github.io/hdr-jpeg/index.html will be brighter (if your mac has an HDR display attached with HDR enabled) but not the images from this HN post yet.
        LoganDark 1y ago
        very interesting, thank you!!

lxgr 1y ago

And I could see Safari changing its behavior to only allow HDR for actually playing videos (or even playing videos with actually varying content, if websites start playing clever games with one second loops of still images), or maybe only after confirming an "I am wearing sunglasses right now" prompt.

jchw 1y ago
It looks like the current Safari developer preview supports it for images, according to the Mozilla bug.
zamadatix 1y ago
If it were to become a real problem I'd sooner see Apple, of all vendors, leave it as one of the many settings flags in Safari than intentionally avoid or remove support for wide range media in their app. Related: there is also a CSS property coming which allows sites to control which page content should be clamped to standard range or not. Worst case you can just add an * !important override in your Safari->Preferences->Advanced->Style Sheet if nobody else considers it problematic but you still wanted to clamp things (in Safari, otherwise you can just disable HDR).
- tshaddox 1y ago
  Why would we expect this to become more of a problem than, say, websites playing audio quietly to encourage you to turn your volume up, than playing extremely loud audio?
  - zamadatix 1y ago
    Websites can't autoplay audio anymore (which is actually really annoying in a few use cases) precisely because of abuse. I don't think it'll be problematic though because a site can already choose to show you images a lot more bothersome than a bright light (I say this as I type on a 1600 nit HDR monitor) already and that's not a particularly common problem to worry about either. Same for videos, which already HDR support in browsers.
    - tshaddox 1y ago
      > Websites can't autoplay audio anymore (which is actually really annoying in a few use cases) precisely because of abuse. But this is hardly true. There are some complicated heuristics (like Chrome's "Media Engagement Index") but many websites can and do autoplay video and audio. And browser policies are even more relaxed for playing audio on user events (like clicking).
      - zamadatix 1y ago
        MEI (and the like) is what I'm referring to, though perhaps we look at this from different angles. Sites can still mark audio should autoplay but it's now up to the browser to decide if it actually does it (because shitty sites would abuse that).
- lxgr 1y ago
  Apple is definitely not afraid to block otherwise widely available features behind flags or extra clicks. For example, Web Push is available on iOS only for "installed PWAs".
  - zamadatix 1y ago
    Specifically media support though, for which Apple has built their entire OS (both macOS and iOS) and app experience around having the best out of the box color experience for designers/aesthetics (e.g. bit depth, wide gamut, true tone type adjustments, hdr all widely adopted early for this reason). This is in contrast to your example of Web Push, which is the antithesis of their goals on how the OS should be used and what for. The only reason Safari lacks HDR image support on macOS right now is it's their lowest priority platform for the feature. It's coming, it's supported on their other platforms, and it wasn't an unreviewed accident they've been working on it.
    - LoganDark 1y ago
      > they've been working on it. Could you provide a link to any recent communication from them about this, or are you just speculating based on that other platforms support it?
      - zamadatix 1y ago
        I don't know about a communication... but I can do one better! You can download the latest Safari Technology Preview on macOS, toggle the "Support HDR Display" feature flag, and see it working (for certain image formats and HDR encodings - it's a flag in preview for a reason). E.g. the images at https://ccameron-chromium.github.io/hdr-jpeg/index.html https://ccameron-chromium.github.io/hdr-jpeg/index.html will be brighter (if your mac has an HDR display attached with HDR enabled) but not the images from this HN post yet.
        LoganDark 1y ago
        very interesting, thank you!!